Burning Bio News

The Waterkeeper Alliance has threatened to sue the Hudson Farm and Perdue Farms, which buys chickens from a Berlin, MD, chicken farm. State officials said last month that a mound photographed by the group on the Berlin farm was treated human sewage sludge, not poultry manure. Maryland Department of the Environment spokeswoman Dawn Stoltzfus says the site was inspected and 80 percent of the sludge has been taken to a landfill with the remainder moved to higher ground and covered.

The Ventura Regional Sanitation District (VRSD) in California announced the start-up of a cutting-edge solid waste management facility. The new Biosolids Drying and Electric Generation Facility is powered by landfill gas, and recycles 100% of its resources to provide a regional biosolids management solution and generate renewable energy for the local power grid. The facility is comprised of 80-ton-per-day biosolids dryers and the nine microturbines that generate 2.25 megawatts (MW) of electricity.

Challenges in permitting the mixing of food wastes and other materials are chronicled in this excellent recent article in BioCycle Magazine. The reality that organic liquids have similar biological, chemical, and physical properties is not relevant to the permitting agencies. Traditionally the agencies are only set up to accept materials from certain sources.

The city of Stamford in southwestern Connecticut will collaborate with Vancouver, British Columbia-based Nexterra Systems Corp. to install a biomass gasification system to power the Stamford Water Pollution Control Authority’s (SWPCA) biosolids dryer, in lieu of natural gas. The system will gasify approximately 6,000 to 8,000 bone-dry tons of wood waste per year, which will be diverted from local waste streams and transported to the facility via truck, a maximum of two trucks delivering fuel to the plant each day. Nexterra estimates the synthesis gas produced from the system will eliminate the use of approximately 77,000 MMbtu per year of natural gas, an 85 percent displacement of the facility’s current natural gas consumption.

Kansas City, MO, uses municipal biosolids to fertilize the City’s trees. One of the strategies includes additional planiting of trees. The city aims toward a goal of planting 120,000 additional trees in the coming decade. Kansas City saves about $20,000 per month using the biosolids rather than incinerating them. These biosolids are not processed enough to allow for use on human food crops, and they are not available to the public.

More than 43,000 households of farmers and herders in Tibet are using methane gas for cooking and heating to better protect the ecological environment, according to latest statistics released by related departments of the autonomous region. – mj: I don’t cover a lot of international news, but 43,000 household digesters is pretty significant.

Nexterra announced that it has completed testing of biosolids as a new fuel source for its proprietary gasification technology in Vancouver, British Columbia. Nexterra is actively developing a new application of its proprietary gasification technology to convert biosolids into renewable heat for use in sludge dryers at municipal wastewater treatment plants. Nexterra’s biosolids gasification solution is expected to reduce carbon emissions by 4,000 - 15,000 tonnes annually per facility, the equivalent of taking over 1,000 - 3,700 cars off the road.

The Banning City Council voted unanimously to ban the burning of sewage sludge in the city, effectively killing a controversial biofuels plant. Liberty Energy, a Bakersfield-based company, had proposed to construct and operate a 15-megawatt renewable power generation plant in Banning. The plant would operate using a mix of biosolids (treated sewage sludge) and biomass (green waste). – mj: It is disappointing to see humans resist innovative projects to utilize human sewage. Maybe the citizens of this community have found a way to eat without producing it?

The City of Sanford, Florida begins operation of its MaxWest gasifier. The unique MaxWest system will gasify Sanford’s treated wastewater sludge to provide renewable “green” thermal energy to replace energy from natural gas for the City’s sludge dryer. The energy in sludge is converted to heat safely and economically. – mj: I have worked with the technology developers for MaxWest. It is a no-nonsense biomass conversion technology.

The San Antonio Water System (SAWS) approved a new contract for New Earth, LLC to handle an additional 65,000 tons of treated biosolids. The SAWS will pay $11.75 per ton to the composter rather than $16.94 per ton to the landfill. With the New Earth contract and an existing agreement with Garden-ville, 135,000 tons (90%) of SAWS biosolids will be composted.

Biosolids trucked from the Western Lake Superior Sanitary District in Duluth are helping generate alfalfa atop a 500-acre tailings waste basin at United Taconite’s iron ore processing plant in Forbes, MN. Biosolids + iron ore mine tailings = alfalfa (biomass) + $

The Ocean County Utilities Authority was named the top competitor for the EPA National Clean Water Recognition Award and signified successful treatment of waste water, turning the effluent into fertilizer and producing cleaner waterways. The NJ wastewater treatment plant produces 9,000 tons of fertilizer per year.

A Jackson County Superior Court judge ordered Agri-Cycle, a food and agricultural waste recycling company in northwestern Jackson County (GA), to stop accepting waste until the company can prove it is not a threat to health or safety. Agri-Cycle, which opened in 2005, collects waste from restaurant grease traps and chicken processing plants, decomposes the waste using bacteria and then processes the remaining wastewater by spreading it onto spray fields.

Synagro has agreed to address odor and other issues surrounding its land application of biosolids. Synagro has been supplying area farmers with biosolids treated at its Leighton, AL plant. The biosolids produced by municipal wastewater plants also include sludge shipped from New York to Alabama by rail car.

The Water Environment Research Foundation (WERF) is now accepting proposals for research addressing biosolids pathogen risk assessment and the effective communication of results.

Converted Organics Inc., Woodbridge, NJ, is permitted to move ahead with a plant that will recycle 500 tons of food waste a day and convert it into valuable organic fertilizer. The facility will derive revenue from tipping fees normally collected by landfills and from sales of the fertilizer we produce.

Fire erupted in the Talmo, GA, Agri-Cycle grease-recycling lagoons at a plant that converts wastes from poultry processors into stable soil amendments. This alternative treatment technology has been controversial and appears to validate fears of communities about unconventional technologies.

Lehigh Cement Co. seeks permission to continue storing treated sewage sludge on its grounds. Lehigh officials said theirs is the first cement plant in North America to burn the pelletized sludge, known as biosolids, as an alternative fuel to power the plant’s cement kiln.

A proposed sludge processing facility eight miles from Hinkley, CA took another step forward Tuesday when a state board issued a permit over the objections of residents. This controversial composting facility has cleared a media storm of resistance. Well done, Nursery Products LLC!

Despite strong opposition from local residents against the proposed Nursery Products biosolids composting facility, a state agency moved one step closer to issuing the facility a permit on Monday. This is an amazing story in local community resistance and institutional support in moving forward to resolve real challenges. Local residents are violently against a proposed biosolids composting facility. It seems if they feel they have a right to generate sewage, they should applaud a constructive commercial solution to their output.